I'd definitely advise them against this. Two nights in each place is maybe sufficient to get a taste - but it doesn't consider the actual travel. This would take up such a bulk of their time on their trip they'd be hard pushed to actually get out of the airport / train / bus to see anything, experience the culture or meet anyone.

If they have to have a destination as a stop-over anyway it might work out, but I'd definitely go for only two or three of those destinations. Plus it would give some flexibility should anything go wrong.

Kind of off topic - but I'm not sure if any other post- travellers have found this also - I find it a lot harder to travel now than when I was backpacking. I'm half-way towards a breakdown on a five hour train trip these days, when previously I could travel for that length of time every other day and not notice it.

I would say that they should limit themselves a bit. 10 days is really not a lot of time. I would say that you have to spend a minimum of 4 days at Angkor Wat/Siem Reap alone to see everything without rushing completely through. We did a two week trip to Cambodia and Vietnam one winter (all the time we had off at the time), and did 4 of the days in Siem Reap. We were able to see pretty much everything we wanted to without feeling like we were rushed through it all. We even had time to explore some of the less popular areas of Siem Reap because we had a great driver that was willing to show us the local side of Cambodia rather than just the tourist stuff. We attended a wedding reception for one of his friends and visited his house and met his wife and two kids. It was an amazing experience and definitely couldn't have been accomplished if we didn't take the time.

We spent the rest of the time in Vietnam but didn't feel that we had enough time to see the north and south so we just limited ourselves to the south portion. We spent most of our time in Saigon but also went to Mui Ne (one of the beach towns) for a few days to get out of the city and see some of the beautiful country side. We would love to go back to Vietnam again when we have more time to see all of the country.

Flight times between SE Asia, China and Japan will eat up a bit of time as well as waiting for visas for Vietnam and China. We traveled to both countries through Thailand and the wait for visas for China was at least 4 days, I believe. Reply to this